Joe's writing. Jack folded the paper and put it in his pocket. So the kid was finally coming around. But just in case, when he took his jacket out of the trailer he unlocked the strong-box, too, and checked the Colt's loads.
Heeled, he strode back into the Starlite. "I've got business," he told Ronnie, who was setting up for another game.
"Like hell. You've turned chicken-shit, on account of my superior moves."
"We'll settle this later." Jack nodded at the trooper and stepped out.
* * *
The Fury was parked in front of room 7A, but no light streamed from the windows. Depending on when he left the note, Joe could be asleep by now. Or passed out. Jack's old paranoia came creeping around the edges as he killed the DeSoto's engine. Why couldn't Joe have called from the hotel manager's office? Why all this business of leaving notes?
He rapped on the door so hard it leaned inward with a creak. The hair on his nape stood up. One hand reached inside his jacket and curled around the Colt's grip. He pressed an eye to the crack in the doorway. A shadowed bulge that could've been Joe lay atop the bed. He eased the gun out and angled the barrel down. Stepped inside …
When the blow came a quiet voice whispered inside him: I told you so. Pain like hot wire laced through his kidneys. At the same time, a gorilla-sized hand swung out of the darkness and clamped over his mouth. He tried to squeeze the Colt's trigger, but there was a rush of movement as another hand, not quite so large, grabbed his wrist and wrenched. The pistol clattered against the floor. Like most gunmen, Jack kept the topmost chamber empty, so the hammer wouldn't discharge a round when jolted.
Too bad. The sound of a gunshot might've brought help.
A second blow landed on his other kidney, bringing molten agony. He dropped to one knee. "How do you like it, cow-fucker?" husked a voice in his ear. It sounded like Scavo. Jack tried to bite the hand pressed against his mouth and got a neck-twist for his trouble. A couple more inches and the vertebrae would've snapped.
"What'd we do with him?" whispered another voice, unfamiliar.
"Take him for a swim. But be quiet about it."
The Scavo-sized man with Scavo's voice dragged him back out the doorway. Jack let his body go limp. He didn't want another neck-twist. In the moonlight, he could see his second assailant; a normal-sized guy wearing a black leather jacket, with a nylon stocking pulled over his head. The stocking bunched at the top like a used rubber, but Jack didn't find that particularly funny.
They hauled him across the parking lot to the pool. Jack heard a gate creak open. If there was enough noise, someone might poke their head out from one of the occupied rooms. Hell, someone might decide to get ice from the manager's office. It could happen.
But the next moment he was being forced to turn around, the hand still tight over his lips, a steady grip pinioning his right arm from behind. He saw the pool's crystalline surface, silver-white and still as death. The water hadn't been drained yet. Pressure on the back of his knee sent him down, hard. Bent him over the side of the pool. The water was close enough he could kiss it, if Scavo's hand wasn't in the way. Now's the time, kid. Do something desperate, or you're going to clock out a floater.
He tried to force his head up, quick enough that he could butt Scavo with the back of his skull. He got halfway there and another pair of hands seized him by the scalp, pushed down. He went under. The water was colder than he'd imagined. Chlorine clawed up his nose.
Don't panic. Don't blow all your air. Try to splash and make noise.
Two pairs of hands held him down. The shock of the water washed all the adrenalin from his body, and Scavo's two kidney-punches throbbed like they'd been landed all over again. Jack flailed his limbs. Any sound they might have made to him was muffled by the water's all-deadening silence.
Don't panic.
Now he was seeing bright spirals, out the corners of his eyes. Black dots. His air was going. He didn't want to, but he loosed a shoal of bubbles. His lungs ached to draw in again; they burned. He fought the impulse with sheer will.
His heartbeat, thudding.
An eternity down there.
The pressure slackened; he came up. He was gasping even before he broke the surface, and got a mouthful of freezing, chemical water. Oxygen felt like live-giving shreds, pouring in through his nostrils. He heard Scavo laugh, then say with clarity: "Here's what Bunny thought of your warning."
The water came rushing back at him.
* * *
He woke in Stalag Luft Three, on the lowermost of a triple-tiered bunk, wrapped in a worn blanket thin as tissue. Cold Silesian air knifed through the gaps in the bunkhouse walls; it knifed through the blanket and through his bones and came out the other side. There was no escaping it. Nights like this all he could do was dream of the warm greatcoats the German guards wore. He heard the labored breathing of the other fourteen men in the surrounding bunks, too cold to sleep.
The rapid chatter of an MG 42 opened up, ripping the stillness.
Lights came on outside. Shouting. "Escape," said Lieutenant Ross, two bunks over. "Someone's making a break for it."
"Escape!"
"It's that goddamn tunnel they we're going on about. Must've finished early."
"Never gonna make it."
"If I had half the balls, I'd—"
A sound cut off all jaw-jacking. Much worse than a machine-gun's burst. Jack's goose-pimples turned to hackles. Fear seized him and pinned him to bunk.
"The dogs! They let 'em loose!"
Bodies swiveled out of lower bunks. Those on the highest tier stayed put, scooting over to make room. POWs clambered upward. To be on the bottom two bunks when the German Shepherds burst in was begging for a torn-out throat. The guards didn't like to hold their animals back, not when making a show of force. Within seconds, everyone had climbed to safety.
Everyone but Jack.
He couldn't move. It felt as if the cold had frozen him fast to the bunk. But he knew what kept him paralyzed; it was his goddamn nerves, shot ever since he'd bailed out of the Black Betty. The other POWs liked to kid him about it, called him 'Shakes' Laramie.
A hand reached down to wave at him. "C'mon, Jack. I'll pull you up."
"I can't—"
"Just reach for me."
Jack lurched high enough to grab Lieutenant Ross's hand. At the same moment their fingers made contact, the bunkhouse door rattled open with a liquid snarl. Jack didn't look at the dogs. He could see them anyway, in his mind's eye. Yellowed canines flashing. Dripping muzzles. Their growls gave him momentary strength.
"That's it, Jack push up."
Lieutenant Ross had been two hundred pounds of Iowa muscle when he'd first appeared at the Stalag. A thousand calorie a day diet and misappropriated Red Cross packages had whittled that to one-thirty. Jack himself had dropped to one twenty-five, but that still wasn't light enough for a man stooping from a bunk to haul him one-handed.
"Up, Jack!"
"Up, Shakes."
"You can do it."
The thin blanket fell away as he began to climb, guided by Ross's firm grip. Then the cold hit him. Somehow, it felt much worse than before. Numbing. With its bite came the gentle promise of sleep. Teeth-chattering, he climbed another inch. The dogs were scrambling through the bunkhouse now, moments away. He could see Ross's pale face alongside Sergeant Cathcart's, peering down at him. They were in the Promised Land. The Third Tier. Just a few more inches and he'd join them. But the cold, the stinging cold …
Then, hot breath against his naked calves.
"Up," Ross yelled. "Up!"
* * *
He jolted from one nightmare into another. The face yelling at him didn't belong to Ross, or Cathcart. It was a middle-aged face, thickly fleshed, wearing spectacles. The German Shepherds were gone. And Jack had only to climb from the Motor Court Inn's stucco pool deck to a lawn chair, with the middle-aged man helping to pull. But the cold was still there, the late October chill, magnified by his dip in the pool.
&
nbsp; Jack sprawled onto the chair. He was aware of his teeth rattling together, uncontrollably. Then his stomach lurched and he spit chlorinated water all over his slacks.
The man shook his head. "I've got to get you to a hospital, mister. You're pale as Ivory Soap."
Whatever he said after that was lost in a series of wracking coughs. Jack felt his lungs trying to seize up. More water sloshed around inside them.
"Can you get to your feet? You're a big man for me to try and wrangle by myself."
Jack waited for a second coughing fit to subside. He managed to sway upward, but when he put all his weight down on his left foot he began to topple. The man caught him.
"This way," he said. "My car's right over here, and I'll get the heater going, full blast."
A heater. Christ, he'd never wanted anything more.
* * *
What happened next he only recalled in flashes. His savior was the Motor Court Inn's manager; he remembered being told that. There was a wild drive that seemed to take forever, and at some point he found himself in a wheelchair, before being peeled out of his dripping clothes. A white-coated man gave him a sedative. Down he went, back into a dark pool, but this one felt warm and smelled like antiseptic.
He returned to consciousness in stages. The slow tick of a radiator heating brought him around. He cracked his eyelids; he could see his jacket, pants, and bolo tie, draped over a chair. Someone had swaddled him in starched sheets and a wool blanket.
A nurse with an angry birthmark on her neck came into the room. She saw he was awake, turned to leave, and returned moments later holding a tray.
"How's your appetite this morning, Mr. Laramie?"
"Healthy, same as ever."
He wanted to ask how long he'd been out, but that seemed secondary to the hollow in his gut. She laid down the tray. It had tapioca, lukewarm chicken soup, and lime Jell-O. He went through it all while the nurse took his blood pressure and made some notes on a clipboard.
"You seem to be doing better," she said. "Dr. Halstead's afraid you might be coming down with pneumonia, though. And there were traces of blood in your urine."
"Someone gave my kidneys a tune-up."
She scribbled more notes.
"How long …?" he began.
"A day and a half."
"When I was brought here, were any police reports made?"
"I don't think so." She flipped back a couple pages on her clipboard. "The motel manager said you must've fallen in the pool. He figured you were either drunk, or couldn't swim. Or both."
Jack swung himself out of bed. He wore only unfamiliar boxer shorts. The originals probably hadn't held up so well during his near-drowning. In bare feet, he stepped over to the chair and made an inspection of his belongings. Wallet. Keys. Cigarettes. Lighter. Empty shoulder holster. Gun—
The Colt was gone.
He remembered; being forced to drop it in room 7A. Must have lost his hat somewhere around there, too. Panic trickled through him. He started slipping on his pants.
"What're you doing? The doctor hasn't cleared you for discharge yet. The pneumonia—"
"I'll sign off AMA, settle my bill, no fuss." He forced a smile. "Just tell me when you're shift's finished, sugar."
"Why do you want to know that?"
"I need a lift to the Motor Court Inn."
* * *
The manager's name was Worley, and he showed no surprise when Jack asked about the Colt.
"Found it in the dumpster out back, along with a nice Stetson. Figured they might've been yours."
"You didn't go to the police?"
"Well, it's a nice gun. Historical. And if nobody showed up to claim it …"
Jack glanced out the lobby window at the parking lot. "Is Joe Crewes still in 7A? I didn't see his Plymouth when I was dropped off."
"He checked out this morning."
Figures.
Jack fired up a smoke while he waited for Worley to get his things. The manager came out of a back room with a shoebox tucked under one arm, and Jack's hat.
"Real nice piece you got here," he said, lifting the Colt from the box with reverence. "I know an amateur gunsmith who collects these things. Probably give you good money for it."
"Not a chance." Jack broke open the cylinder; the dum-dum rounds were still in place. He slid the gun back into its holster with a sense of completeness.
"On the level," Worley said, leaning over the veneered front desk, "what happened out there by the pool?"
"It's a long story."
"Mr. Crewes keeps some, ah, interesting company."
"He does at that."
"Did you cotton to that pitch of his about a subdivision of bomb-shelters? It sounded screwy to me."
"He told you about it?"
"Tried to get me to invest. Said he's going to MC at the groundbreaking ceremony they're having today."
Jack remembered Billy DeFour, bragging at the party about clearing enough money to have a groundbreaking in a couple days. That had been a couple days ago. "Did he say when?"
"Two, I think."
Jack checked his watch. It was 1:45. He clapped the Stetson atop his head. "Mr. Worley, I can't thank you enough for what you did. It could've meant my life."
"Just being a good citizen. To tell you the truth, a motel manager's job is usually dead boring." He added: "I've been thinking about becoming a private detective. Been taking a mail correspondence course, and I'm almost done."
"A P.I., huh? I might know a thing or two about that."
"I know you do. I checked your wallet while you were unconscious."
* * *
Jack stomped the accelerator on his third trip out to Bunker Pines. There was no way he could catch the opening of the ceremony, but he might be able to settle with Joe when it was over. The DeSoto, true to form, decided to act sluggish. He figured it was the carburetor. Or the plugs. Something. Probably needed a whole overhaul, which would eat the profits he'd managed to accumulate the past couple months.
And here I am, risking my nuts over a sixty-dollar case.
At 2:46 he hit the back road leading to the lot, and noticed a strange thing. A line of cars headed in the opposite direction. Was the ceremony over already? He glimpsed faces through windshields; they looked angry, or disappointed. Mostly angry.
There was the billboard, and the turn with the break in the pines. He took it slow, on account of all the cars streaming out. The DeSoto bumped over a rut and into the big grassy clearing. Only a handful of parked cars remained. Jack saw the red Fury a little farther over, then the pavilion, and a sea of folding chairs, all empty. His temples started to pound. He swore he could feel chlorine burn his nose.
The DeSoto came to a stop just as a Chevy pickup and a Pontiac was pulling away. Jack got out. Car doors slammed shut. People were muttering. The mood fit Jack's own. To the west a storm front was marching in; a big line of black clouds looming over the pine tops. Ice storm, it looked like. That fit fine, too.
Jack stalked over to the pavilion. A podium had been set up, and drooping beside it, looking ready for crucifixion, was Joe Crewes. He wore a blazer with a silver tie-pin. One hand still clutched a shovel. The blade had been spray-painted a cheap gold.
Joe's head jerked up at the sound of approaching boots. "Jack—"
A right cross cut him off. Joe dropped the shovel. He stumbled backward against the podium and toppled it, before falling over, himself.
"That's for setting me up," Jack said.
Joe rubbed his split lip. He glared at Jack, but there was no fight in him. "What're you talking about? Why didn't you come when I asked you to?"
"I did come. And Ziegler's men almost drowned me for it."
Joe's forehead wrinkled. "That doesn't make sense. I tried to find you at the Starlite, but the old man there said you'd gone to lunch. So I left a note on your trailer. I waited all afternoon, and you never showed."
"What you'd do that evening?"
"Rosie and Billy took me to dinner
. We stayed out a while."
"Uh-huh." It was sliding into place. "Who drove?"
"We took Billy's Imperial."
"Didn't get back until real late, did you?"
"I don't remember too well. Rosie got me pretty lit."
Jack shook his head. "Ziegler's men were probably following you, when you left the note. They took it, arranged for an ambush, and put the note back around evening."
"That sounds kind of paranoid, Jack."
"Paranoia's something you could use a little more of." He gestured at the empty folding chairs. "And what happened here? Groundbreaking didn't go the way you imagined, did it?"
"There were supposed to be bulldozers … and Billy and Rosie never showed. It was just me. I gave a speech. Thought it sounded pretty good, too, but people caught on there wasn't anyone else coming."
"Left holding the shovel, huh?"
Joe lowered his head. "Maybe the bad weather stalled them."
"You know better."
"It's a lot of money, Jack. Over thirty thousand. Morning after the party, Billy wanted all the checks from investors cashed. Didn't want to wait. That got me suspicious. And I met Ziegler. Just a sawed-off runt, but he's dangerous. I could feel it."
"Hell, my ass is still puckered from talking to him."
"What am I going to tell the guys at the VFW? It's mostly their money. They trusted me. Christ, I need a drink." He rocked to his feet; Jack held out a hand, but he batted it away. "And don't tell me you told me so."
"I'm not the type."
"I can see Billy screwing me over—he's a car salesman. But not Rosie. Not her. Maybe she's a little hard on the outside, but once you get past it …"
"You're hopeless, kid." Jack watched as the last car pulled out of the clearing, leaving only the DeSoto and the Fury. "You sober?"
"Painfully."
"The way I see it, you've got two options. Go to the police—"
"I'd have to get blitzed, first."
"—or try and find Billy. If he's not in Mexico by now, we might be able to persuade him to give the money back."
"What if Ziegler's already got it?"
"Then you're well and truly screwed, partner. We can't be tangling with him." Jack didn't want to run into Scavo again; if he did, he knew with cold certainty he'd gun the bastard down. Or try to. The memory of that freezing pool was too fresh.
The Girls of Bunker Pines (The Drifter Detective Book 3) Page 5